September 21, 2011

The Marines were the service most opposed to ending the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, but they were the only one of five invited branches of the military to turn up with their recruiting table and chin-up bar at the center Tuesday morning. Although Marines pride themselves on being the most testosterone-fueled of the services, they also ferociously promote their view of themselves as the best. With the law now changed, the Marines appear determined to prove that they will be better than the Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard in recruiting gay, lesbian and bisexual service members.

you know its funny - I've seen very littly outside of conservative sites mentioning much less decrying the fact that DADT was Bill Clinton's handiwork. However, its interesting that what little I've seen in that regard gives Clinton a pass as to "Congress wasn't ready for that sort of change yet". I'm also somewhat amused that the same apparently couldn't be said of the Military.

People happily ignore the fact that military is one place where *things change slowly*. Very, very slowly in some regards. I've known people from the military who were for and those who were against DADT or serving with gays. I've not seen anyone though that thought that anything changed quickly in the military.

I know guys that quit the service when they started to allow women to serve in the 80's. Sometime for good reasons, like seperate physical requirements for men and women. Thats changed however.

Do you know who else the military discriminates against? Real fat people. Also, people who cannot read or write, not to mention disabled people. People who have no physical stamina can't join the military. Why is this allowed?

The Marines are the best service branch. The Marines are focused on professionalism. Whether you are gay or not really should not be an issue to that. It is not like such individuals are not already there.

AllenS, the Marines have been recruiting the butchest women they could find for a long time. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

(1) TITLE 10.—Upon the effective date established by subsection (b), chapter 37 of title 10, United3 States Code, is amended—4 (A) by striking section 654; and5 (B) in the table of sections at the beginning6 of such chapter, by striking the item relating to7 section 654.8 (2) CONFORMING AMENDMENT.—Upon the effec9tive date established by subsection (b), section 571 of10 the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal11 Year 1994 (10 U.S.C. 654 note) is amended by strik12ing subsections (b), (c), and (d).

the Navy started opening up seagoing ratings to women in '72 (or earlier)

I was a Machinist Mate and resented that women were allowed to enter and be advanced in that rating Since they would not be able to serve aboard ship, they took up shore billets from other MM's and forced the sea/shore rotation time from 8-10 years at sea with 2 years ashore to 10-12 years at sea.

They also took up many of the few ashore billets in the rating, forcing more of those men, when they did get shore duty, to fill more shitty jobs like Master at Arms, Shore Patrol and such.

Finally, since the Navy promotes Navy wide, every time a woman got promoted who had not put in sea time, it meant that a man who had got left back. There was suspicion that promotions were rigged so women got extra points. I don't know if it was true. It was widely believed at the time.

to this day there are still some problems but it all worked out in the end, more or less.

The 70's were a crappy time to be in the Navy. This was one of the reasons.

Back in the 1970s when I was attending the University of Tennessee, we had an All-American linebacker, Jackie Walker, who was gay. I don't recall anyone questioning his testosterone level, especially opposing running backs.

John, I have to agree with you on the Marine uniforms. The worse thing that the Army did was to cancel khaki uniforms. Nothing looked sharper in the Army than heavy starched khaki.

I remember at Ft. Bragg and we'd have a function to do, and we'd break starch, tucked into our spit shined jump boots. When we'd put on our pants, someone would stand behind you and using their fingers and thumbs, put two equal folds in the shirt so there was no extra cloth in the front. We all looked the same. Sharp. Deadly.

It seems like this new policy will require recruiters to "Pre Judge" potential enlistees based on preconceived notions of what they think being gay is. Unless they intend to require some sort of demonstrated ability as proof.

Marines get shitty second half equipment and less pay than the other branches, yet do not complain when the most unpleasant tasks are given to them. Because they involve fighting. Heck, it is what they do. Fight.

“It’s like a little family,” he said. “We get mad at each other, we joke with each other, but we don’t let anybody else make fun of us.”

So true.

I love that it was the Marines who showed their moral courage by setting up at the center. Awesome.

An interesting fact to note is that it was only women that showed their interest - the Marines have never had any trouble recruiting lesbians, if anyone had any doubt about that. Straight and gay women Marines have long existed side by side.

I think it would be most interesting to find out how many gays there are in the services. I can't think of any gay male Marines in the news. Have there been any?

The Marine Corps (not 'Corpse' Mr President) was the most vocal service opposing the end of DADT.

What the Marines are doing now is completely consistent with ancient military tradition.

In the Military it is your duty to voice your honest opinion and provide an honest recommendation to any proposed policy suggested by your chain of command.

Once the chain of command makes a final decision and issues an actual legal order it becomes the military members duty to do his or her best to fully support and implement the command decision.

Once a decision is made, military members and units must put aside their individual objections to the decision. To engage in foot dragging is at best highly unprofessional and is very close to outright sabotage.

You can still bitch about the decision at the bar, but you have to leave your bitching there.

The chain of command gave the Marines an order. When you give a Marine a legal order he or she will say 'hoorah!' and charge up the hill to implement it. Even if they didn't like it. No surprise there. That's how they roll.

(a) Any person subject to this chapter who engages in unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sodomy. Penetration , however slight, is sufficient to complete the offense.

Personally I am all for cutting all those spousal benefits to nothing. Why not, we need to cut spending.

Why not? I've been dragged all over two different countries, uprooting every couple of years for a decade now. It's nearly impossible to find good career positions in most of the towns anywhere near a military base. But, I don't get to relocate for better job prospects. The military decides where I get to live. And, even if I manage to find a decent job, I don't get to keep it long enough to accrue reasonable benefits. I've been a single parent through four deployments (so far) and countless training schools and other "short" geographical separations. (Two months is "short" for me. Has your wife ever had to hold down the fort for that long?) I'm going to stop there, but my list of accomplishments that no normal spouse has to do goes on much longer.

I deserve the few spousal benefits that the military provides me. I have earned them. That's why not.

And while we're at it, I would deserve those benefits regardless of my sexual orientation.

Why should unmarried troops subsidize your family's lifestyle? Why not take the cash we're currently paying for, say, the difference between BAH Type I and Type II, and distribute it among all servicemembers, married and unmarried alike? Same for the subsidized portion of TRICARE premiums.

No one is saying that military spouses don't make sacrifices, and, outside of maybe nursing and federal employment, those career sacrifices are significant. However, those benefits hurt single servicemembers with no children, because spousal benefits eat up limited dollars that would otherwise be available to fund pay increases across the board.

Jennifer, you are correct. I was being more facetious than anything (and I was really referring to social security and other such entitlements that can have a spousal benefit). I see where the gay marriage thing is going on that and while you can make the agrument that there is a societial benefit for encouraging families. Should we be financing same sex or male/female couples without kids?

Shouldn't we give the same benefits we give to male female couples with underaged kids to same sex couples with kids?

As for military relocation, I would agree, assistance should be provided to one's household you are seeking to relocate (it should not be conditioned on the gender of the couple). Otherwise people will not re-enlist.

That may hurt single soldiers without children, but the military benefits overall with mature and stable members. And those same single soldiers benefit from having the option to marry and start a family if they choose to without having to give up their careers. Provided of course that they are heterosexual.

Couldn't we have predicted this months ago? Military personnel have opinions just like everybody else, but at the heart of what they do is follow the rules. Now that the rules say that openly gay people can serve, I'm not the least bit surprised that the Marines are trying to find the best of the bunch.

Well, if we did away with the BAH differential between Type I and Type II, and paid everyone the same basic allowance for housing, then military members can still get married, and still stay in the service. They will simply make up the difference out of basic pay, like, well, everyone else in the country.

Nobody is quitting their career at Amalagamated, Inc., because the boss doesn't pay extra to employees just for turning in a marriage certificate, and nobody is putting off getting married just because the stockholders at Amalgamated, Inc., pay extra to people just for turning in a marriage certificate.

Why do you hate single servicemembers, Jennifer? Why? WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY???? :-D

"Would you like to tell all of us about your time in the service, and how this isn't going to impact unit cohesion."

Allen, I spent five years serving aboard a Trident missile submarine. There were roughly 160 men aboard a confined space for approximately 3 months at a time. We didn't hit foreign ports and only hit the domestic ones in the last 2-3 weeks of the patrol, and only for a few days. So we were cooped up together almost the whole time. All men. If any place should have unit cohesion suffer by having gay men aboard, it's that.

I served during DADT. We had at least 5 men aboard who were pretty much known to be gay. They didn't tell anyone, but they lived their lives when we were in port and had their relationships and went about their business. Not a one of the other men aboard (myself included) would have hesitated to lay down our lives for any of them if it came to that. And the reverse is true. They were professional, dependable and vital to our deterrent mission.

I was one of the Yeoman for the boat. Whenever DADT was amended with some new cockamamie thing like, "Don't pursue" or "Don't harass," we would have to train the crew on the change. One time, I was discussing one of the new "don'ts" and someone in the back yelled out, "how about don't give a shit???" Everyone in the room laughed and many applauded. I saw a few of the men who were gay get a nudge or a pat on the back from their fellow sailors.

This issue is moot. The fleet, and I'm guessing the rest of the military, has largely moved on. As the anxiety about the end of DADT fades and more and more brave service men and women start coming out, it will be less and less shocking and people who are pessimistic and still serving will come to understand that a person can be gay and still be a hero. Patriotic, able-bodied Americans want to serve their country. It's simply un-American to deny them that opportunity because some people they're working with think they have cooties.

Having seen it first hand, I trust in the professionalism of our military more than that. So should you.

I just want to re-direct the language here. The military does not provide family benefits because it wants to be nice to people, to provide freebies.

It wants to retain its warriors, and keep them ready to go, and effective when called up. One way We the People do this is by granting various assistance to the families left behind.

So the current method selected, is to provide a baseline benefit to all military families, and additional combat pay for those in harm's way.

Our military is not in the providing benefits to families business. That it does it is a force readiness choice, not a mission. Military family benefits are not rights, and they are not permanent obligations that We The People owe to our warriors.

So when you talk about changing family benefits, you also have to talk about the changes in force readiness. Fairness is an effect, not an objective.

Fred4Pres said...As Barry Goldwater said, "All that matters is they shoot straight."===========Goldwater was often a moron. As an AF General, he should know that the actual "triggermen", the people shooting - are far less important than the whole organization working cohesively.

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My own thoughts are that with male homosexuals a minute part of the population(2%), with many that are honestly a little too prissy and effeminant to be a good fit in the military (more than gen pop, but less than a majority) - there will be no significant "rush" of male homosexuals to sign up. No real pent up demand, as those gays that wanted to serve and were pretty indistinguishable from any other man - have done so since the volunteer military was established.

Dykes though, are a whole different matter. I can see a lot more butches coming in, staying in, and I predict the integration problem will have challenges mainly from straight young females going into specialities that have supervision dominated by lesbian NCOs.

I know of a couple of units that have been, at different times, taken over by a "lesbian mafia," complete with transfers of lesbians to the lesbian by a lesbian friendly contact in Personnel Command. Women have been transferred from other units to do "make work" jobs and to be sex partners to lesbians, all the way up to the rank of Sergeant Major and at least one major I'm familiar with.

This all happened during a shooting war in Iraq, in country, but also in Europe.

Sadomasochistic lebian orgies, young women trading sexual favors for favorable evaluation reports. Or being threatened with unfavorable ones if they didn't put out.

You name it, it was happening. I have no reason to believe it isn't still happening, but it was happening as recently as 2005-06.

This has nothing to do with people "moving on." This is an entirely predictable result of putting young people in harm's way with not enough to do and the constant threat of death from an errant mortar round, if nothing else.

As for demoralizing Islamoids, knowing a mighty chick is behind the weapons control console 40,000 feet up - A reporter for Lebanon Star, embedded with a Taliban unit, asked that question. "Some Americans believe that you and your fighters are demoralized knowing that there are American female bomber pilots killing your forces"The Taliban leader and his men shrugged...So a female pushes a button from perfect safety 5 kilometers above us. What does that mean in Allah's eyes? A coward or a child can do the same. We dispatched our own women and children out to blood them...to finish off captured or wounded Russians with knives, garden hoes. At times, especially if they were taking their time about it - the maddened infidel being dispatched by Allah's will - would find the strength to kill or harm. Sometimes we would let the child or woman shoot the Russian with our weapons for a change in how we dispatch the enemy...it pleased them, it pleased us. Women and children carry our ammunition into battle. Many died from Russian fire. They plant mines. Our Believing women and children naturally have more bravery and courage than the American female infidel striking us from perfect safety.

from LA Times 9/21/11: In California, former Marine Capt. Kristen Kavanaugh, 31, hopes to join the Navy four years after she left the Marines. She had served in Iraq, but could no longer stand the pressure of hiding her sexuality.

"The turning point was Iraq," said Kavanaugh, now a graduate student at USC. "Everyone else could call their loved one and talk openly. I had to guard my words and only talk in general terms. It was awful having to live like that."

Seems like the most negative opinions here are from people who don't know a single gay or lesbian but are sure they know all about them.

Jason, the difference is that Amalgamated, Inc. isn't likely to place undue burdens on the potential spouses of its employees. It doesn't require potential spouses of its employees to follow its rules. And its employees are welcome and able to quit and find New and Improved Amalgamated, Inc.'s at any time that their employment does place unmanageable burdens on their families. None of that is true in the military.

Again, the military benefits from career soldiers and family stability. It is not in its best interest to cater to none but the single soldier.

And BAH is the least of it. The single biggest benefit to military families is the healthcare. Crappy though it is. The difference between housing allowance with and without is small, overseas at least.

I see your whyyyyyyyyyy do you hate the single soldier and raise you a thiiiiink of the chiiiildren. ;)